Resources may have value, wherefore they are often sought to be secured against unauthorized access. For example, a warehouse may be locked to prevent theft or sabotage of its contents, cars may be startable only with a suitable access credential, such as a key, such that the cars cannot be easily stolen.
Valuable resources may be utilized by their owners directly, as in the case of a personally owned vehicle, or access to resources may be delegated, for example, where a car rental service operates a fleet of cars, customers may be given keys that unlock and enable starting a specific car. Further, a person may lend his car to a family member, for example, by giving the family member the car keys.
Alternatively to physical keys, access codes may be used in securing access to resources, for example, a safe in a hotel room may be configured with a secret code, which unlocks the door of the safe. Likewise, an email account or encrypted file may be protected with a password or passphrase. Access to such a resource may be delegated by providing a copy of the password or passphrase to the delegate, with the consequence the delegate will have access that is equal to the access of the resource owner.
A yet further alternative is where resources are managed by resource lock devices, which are connected to a central server. Users may be provided with user-specific access dongles, which may comprise user-specific access codes and/or encryption keys. An operator may update the resource lock devices via a network connection between the resource lock devices and the central server, to inform the locks of users that are to be given access, or denied access.
Using the network connection, stolen or lost access dongles may be deactivated to prevent unauthorized persons from gaining access via the lock devices, for example.